Teachers attending to student reasoning: Do beliefs matter?

Abstract

We present the results of a quasi-experimental study of pre-service elementary teachers' learning to recognize students' mathematical reasoning from classroom videos. Researchers examined the nature of participants’ beliefs regarding mathematics education. We found that pre-service elementary teachers whose beliefs were consistent with NCTM Process Standards (NCTM, 2000), or that transitioned in the direction of consistency with the Standards, regarding the teaching and learning of mathematics, were more successful in recognizing students' reasoning than those whose beliefs were generally inconsistent. Predictive Analytics and Generalized Linear Regression modeling were used to quantify the magnitude of experimental pre-service teachers’ reasoning growth and combined pre/post study assessment reasoning success in contrast to that of the comparison groups. The resulting model explained nearly 90% of the variability in success on the reasoning assessment, showing that beliefs do indeed matter for recognition of reasoning.